Love Is Still A Worthy Cause and More Deep Thoughts

I'm back from my hiatus, which included a comments firestorm from my feature on Monday at TheSitsgirls.com, which by the way I was all about. I met, like a million ladies over the course of the last few days and I hope that I can eventually make it to everyone's blogs, but because as you know, I'm a blogging slacker, it may not happen, just putting that disclaimer out there.

Ever had one of those weeks that make you feel like this guy?


Or this guy?



That pretty much sums up the week right there.

Hopefully the week will perk up, but in honor of the upcoming day of love, I thought instead of getting into the details of the train wreck of a week, I'd devote the week to the discussion of love.

The arrival of Valentine's Day as a societal peculiarity is obscured by almost as many legends and myths as the idea of love itself.
One legend has Valentine as a priest in third century Rome who performed marriages for young lovers in secret despite Emperor Claudius II's decision that single men are better soldiers and thus should be forbidden to marry. As a champion of lovers, Valentine valiantly goes on uniting lovers until he is put to death.

According to one legend, Valentine became the name-sake for the holiday after sending the first "valentine" greeting to the jailor's daughter, who he was in love with. He signed it, "From Your Valentine," and the rest is history.

And while some claim that Valentine's Day is celebrated in February to commemorate the death or burial of this Saint Valentine, some believe that the date is all a part of the Catholic church's conspiracy to christianize celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival, which was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture.

During this festival, the priests would sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purification. The men of the town would slice the goat's hide into strips, dip them in the sacrificial blood and they would then take to the streets. With a "gentle" slapping of both women and crops with the goathide strips, the women believed they would be fertile in the coming year.

Nothing says I love you and I want you to have my baby like goathide slapping.

And similiar to 21st century dating, according to legend, all the young women in the city would then place their names in a big urn and the city's bachelors would each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman.

Romantic stuff.

With today's history lesson completed, I wanted to begin my "love series" with a clip from singer Sara Groves discussing the meaning behind her song "Love is Still a Worthy Cause."



Now for those of you who don't know Sara Groves, she is a truly gifted singer/songwriter out of what I call my alma mater, Minneapolis. Not only did I attend college in Minneapolis, but I feel I graduated from the "school of Minneapolis." Going from the middle of nowhere, farm country North Dakota, to the big city of Minneapolis was definitely an educational experience for me at 18 years old. That's where I witnessed my first transvestite. Big educational stuff.

Anyway, I have a sidebar link to her, so you can check out more about her there, but I generally love all her music. This song though, I don't know that I love it so much. I don't know why, it just doesn't make it all the way to my spirit I guess. And I don't normally traipse around YouTube very often, but I somehow stumbled on this very short video of her discussing how this group of businessmen went out into the African jungle to attempt at ending poverty and at finding a "person of promise" in the jungle that they could pour themselves into and who would help them help the people in the African jungle.

They end up going to the most remote community they have ever been, to find that all the adults in the community have died of AIDS. The children were being led by a 17-year-old girl as they foraged for food and anything else they could to simply survive in the jungle.

At that moment, it started to downpour and all these businessmen from Minneapolis started fixing roofs throughout the community and some even ended up giving all their clothes to these kids so they'd be covered from the rain.

You'll have to watch the video, but in the end, Sara comes to the realization that we are those kids and that G-d goes to great lengths to come into our lives, our spiritual poverty and our situations even though we have nothing to offer. You'll just have to listen to the video to get the full story, but I wanted to start my series with that thought.

Whether or not you believe in G-d, Jesus or any of what the Bible says Jesus does for us as his children, I believe everyone has a longing, however buried it may be, for the G-d of the universe to touch their lives. And when asked, G-d does so.

That is how love even exists in the world.

Even though the love of humanity sometimes feels like this.





Show Me Your Web Site and I'll Vote For You!!